The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
